// We are establishing contact. Do you wish us to filter out the emotional component?//
(What emotional component?)
// Your reaction to the contact.//
(I don't know what you—yes, dammit, filter it out.)
Tracy-Ace was scowling again. "Relax, will you? I'm getting a confusing interface."
He drew a long, slow breath and let it out.
Something was flickering inside him; he couldn't tell quite what. It glimmered twice, three times, then for several seconds was much brighter. Something was stirring in his thoughts, but he couldn't identify it. Then it stopped.
Tracy-Ace lifted her hands and rubbed them together, frowning thoughtfully.
"Couldn't you make contact?" he asked.
For a moment, she simply looked at him. With what: Curiosity? Disdain? Humor? Legroeder experienced a sudden flush of what felt like attraction, as though something meaningful had passed or grown between them, without his knowledge. He felt dizzy. The feeling faded, as her expression changed to one of puzzlement. "I got what I needed," she said finally. "Is something wrong?"
He opened his mouth, closed it, took a silent poll of the implants. (What did she get?)
// Our report. Exactly as we intended.// There seemed to be a slight air of cockiness in the answer. He clucked silently; he didn't approve of cockiness among implants.
Focusing on Tracy-Ace, he forced a smile. "No, no—it's just that it was very quick. I could hardly feel it. I wasn't sure if you'd made contact."
"You," she said, resting her chin on one hand, "are an odd one." She stared at him hard for a few seconds, perhaps processing the information he'd uploaded to her.
He started to answer in his own defense, then realized he didn't know if she'd meant it as an insult or a compliment.
"Would you like something to eat?" Tracy-Ace flicked at the air with her fingertips. A stout, half-bald waiter seemed to appear from nowhere, wiping his hands on a soiled white apron. After reeling off a list of specials in a bored voice, he took their orders for sandwiches and moke, or rather, murk. Legroeder stared at the man, thinking he was the only one around here who didn't look like a pirate. But was that a faint glimmer around the edges—?
The waiter belched and winked out.
No wonder he'd appeared out of nowhere. Legroeder looked at Tracy-Ace with raised eyebrows. She shrugged. "Just our way of remembering the home worlds."
Legroeder cleared his throat and looked around the joe shop while they waited. The lone man on the other side of the shop seemed to be watching him. For a moment, Legroeder thought he saw the man glow. He rubbed his eyes and the impression was gone. He looked back at Tracy-Ace. She seemed preoccupied, and didn't speak again until a panel suddenly slid open in the wall next to the table.
"Sandwiches and murk," Legroeder heard, and bent to peer through the open panel. The waiter's face was peering back. A tray slid out onto their table, bearing two plates and two mugs. The panel slammed shut.
"Friendly service," Legroeder remarked softly. Tracy-Ace gestured, and he pulled a plate toward himself. He took a swallow of the murk, and shuddered.
Tracy-Ace didn't seem to notice his reaction. "You didn't seem afraid of me," she said suddenly, lifting her sandwich. "Why?"
Legroeder was still working his tongue to get rid of the taste. "Huh? Why should I have been afraid of you?"
"When you were brought to me. The guards who brought you were scared to death, you know." Tracy-Ace took a bite.
He kept his lips puckered, but in a scowl. "I was wondering about that. Why were they afraid?"
"You really don't know?"
He spread his hands. "I'm new here, remember?"
She chewed thoughtfully, arching one eyebrow, then took a sip of murk. "I wouldn't have thought it would take much explanation. At your old outpost, weren't you nervous when you were brought into the presence of a node holder?"
Legroeder felt a flash of memory: of fear, and hatred, and longing, and.... He cut it off with an internal throat-slashing gesture. "There were things that made me scared, yes," he said. "But we didn't have... node holders."
Her eyes narrowed. "No node holders in Barbados?"
"Well, none where I worked, anyway." (Barbados? Am I supposed to be from Barbados?)
// We told you that. //
(You did? Is there such a place?)
// There is reason to think so. In any case, the goal was avoid connecting you with DeNoble, since you are presumably a wanted man there.//
Clearing his throat, he tried to shift the subject back before he said something provably false. "So then, because you have that name, Tracy-Ace/Alfa, they're afraid of you?"
"Oh, yes." Her lips tightened. "Indeed they are."
"Because—"
"Because of certain... powers of authority... that I am occasionally called upon to exercise." Her gaze seemed intense for a moment, and then the strain seemed to subside from her eyes. One corner of her mouth turned up. "Powers that... it does not appear I will have to exercise in connection with you."
Legroeder felt his eyebrows come together. He sat stone still, thinking. Concluding nothing. He raised his cheese sandwich and took a large bite. Finally, when it was clear she wasn't going to continue, he said, "That's good. I guess. Isn't it?"
Tracy-Ace's implants glittered as she peered at him. Abruptly, she laughed out loud. "Yes, it's good. Very good. Now, finish up. Based on our briefing, I think I can make you a useful citizen here. There's a lot I have to show you." She drained her mug. "That's assuming you decide to stay, and we decide not to ship you back to Barbados. But there's plenty of time to decide."
He cleared his throat. "Ah. Well... I do want to stay..."
There was a sudden movement off to his left, and he saw the shop's other occupant stirring. Tracy-Ace was glancing that way now, and for a moment, her expression seemed to become still, almost frozen. But her implants flickered energetically, and for just an instant, Legroeder had a chilling sense that something was passing between Tracy-Ace and that other man. Legroeder squinted, and saw that the man was bald, and dressed in light colored shirt and pants, and had an unsettlingly luminous quality about him. The man nodded in their direction, and Tracy-Ace nodded back. Just as Legroeder started to shift his gaze back to Tracy-Ace, the man abruptly vanished. Winked out.
Another hologram? Legroeder shot an inquiring glance at Tracy-Ace. "Who was that?"
Tracy-Ace shrugged; she seemed slightly uncomfortable with the question. "Just someone I know." She slid out of her seat. "Good. So let's go get you settled. Ordinarily I'd have someone else take you to your quarters, but I'm off duty." She paused, pursing her lips. "You know, you seem like a very interesting man, Rigger Legroeder. I believe I want to oversee your case myself."
He nodded cautiously, wondering if this was a good development or an ominous one.
"Come on. We'll take the flicker-tube."
He took a last bite and dusted his hands together. "What's a flicker-tube?" he asked, braving one last swallow of murk.
"They don't have flicker-tubes on Barbados, either?"
Legroeder thought a moment. They did not, he decided.
Tracy-Ace shook her head. "Rings," she said, "I don't know how your people manage. Let's go."
Legroeder bristled on behalf of his fictitious home, and followed her out of the joe shop.
Chapter 22
Outpost Ivan
It seemed, as they walked through the halls, that everyone they passed was moving quickly, as though on urgent business. Even so, Legroeder felt that something was missing, some element of ordinary random bustle. Or maybe it felt emptier than he expected. "I thought there'd be more people around," he murmured, half unconsciously.
Tracy-Ace glanced at him sharply, and he wondered if he'd said something wrong. But she answered calmly enough, "There's been a big shift of personnel lately. More and more people have been sent out into the field, to work in fleet preparations."
Legroeder tried to hide a twinge. "Fleet preparations?" Preparations for what?
Tracy-Ace glanced sharply again. Was he being tested? He took a stab. "Are you talking about the pirate fleets?"
That brought a laugh.
"What'd I say?"
"Usually, it's the people who don't like us who call us pirates," she said abruptly. "The preferred term around here is raider." She was silent for a moment before adding, "Usually defined as 'raiding for that which should be ours.' " She laughed again, in a hollow echo of the first.
Legroeder tried to interpret the sound. Was she making a commentary on the raiding—or on his naiveté? "I guess I've picked up some of the Narseil's language," he said apologetically. "Most people on the outside, you know, do regard the Kyber fleets as pirate ships."
Tracy-Ace cocked an eyebrow at him and lengthened her stride. "Well, that's not the fleet I meant, anyway."
"What, um, fleet did you mean?"
"You really don't know?"
He shook his head.
"The colony fleet."
Colony fleet...?
At that moment, they came around a corner into a brightly lit area that looked like a transit platform, except instead of cars, it was filled with clear vertical cylinders.
Legroeder blinked at the sight.
"You'll see later," she continued. "This is where we catch the transport between sectors."
He was struggling to keep up with the cascade of new information. Transport between sectors... He remembered it had looked as though the sprawled-out structures in this outpost were anchored separately in the Flux. It had seemed an unlikely arrangement.
"The habitats float independently, but they're joined by the flicker-tubes," Tracy-Ace said, as though reading his mind. "It avoids certain instability problems of large structures, and gives us greater safety in the event of an attack."
"Have you ever been attacked here?" Legroeder asked, remembering uneasily that part of his mission was to gain intelligence that might permit just such an attack.
Her eyebrows bristled. "No. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And if it did, we could absorb some hard punches and still survive. Our leadership has always been very strong on taking the long view."
As they talked, people were crossing the platform in both directions, stepping in and out of the clear cylinders. Those who stepped into the cylinders sank out of sight through the floor; others emerged from below like slow-rising pistons.
Tracy-Ace led him to a pair of empty cylinders, side by side, and touched the two simultaneously. "We'll be linked. Go on and get in." She stepped into one capsule as Legroeder stepped into the other. The capsule closed around Legroeder with a puff. "You with me?" he heard.
"Yup." His breath went out with a whoof, as the capsule dropped away from the platform. He looked down. They were falling, Tracy-Ace before him, into a glowing, golden tube of energy. It curved downward and away, seemingly to infinity. In the distance, he could see the arc of the tube intersecting with other strands like threads of a spiderweb. Tiny droplets of light were moving through the tubes; he guessed them to be other passenger capsules in transit. It was impossible to judge his velocity.
"So this—" his words came out in a gasp "—is a flicker-tube?"
Tracy-Ace's voice was a chuckle in his ear. "This is a flicker-tube." He could almost imagine her standing beside him. "Okay, now I can fill you in..."
"I, uh—" He cut himself off as a shower of images sprang up around him, painted on the blurred inner surface of the tube. The images changed with an almost cinematic flicker as they shadowed him in his glassy chariot. He reeled from the sheer volume and speed: strobing glimpses of faces and ships and places, and fast-changing shots of what looked like space-station construction. "What the hell is this?" he breathed.
"It's the flicker feed," Tracy-Ace's voice said. "It conveys news and information to people when they're in transit. It makes use of slack time."
Legroeder wished he had something physical to hang onto. The motion through the tube was a blur, and the images were now a blur, too. "How is this conveying information? I can't make out a thing."
// We are processing... //
"If your augments are any good," Tracy-Ace said, "they'll be picking it up and storing it for you. Don't worry about trying to follow it consciously—"
Thank God. Legroeder closed his eyes for a moment. He was startled to find that he was still seeing the images. (What's going on? I thought it was being projected on the tube wall.)
// Meant to look that way. But no, it's coming through us.//
(Oh... )
"—but you are meant to be observing sensations and context, to help you integrate it," Tracy-Ace continued. "It would be better if I kept quiet now and let you watch."
Legroeder breathed slowly and deeply, trying to stifle the thoughts racing through his mind. A hundred images flashed by every second. After a while, he was only dimly aware of the Flux outside the tube wall; he almost came to feel that it was normal to be surrounded by swirling patterns of light woven through with holographic images, and the murmuring of recorded voices, some in languages he could not identify. It was like listening to multiple conversations and understanding none of them—but absorbing it all, so that later, perhaps, he would be able to sort and translate and comprehend. From within, the implants murmured repeatedly...
// ...relax and listen, do not concern yourself with comprehension... //
All right, then, he wouldn't...
* * *
Several times, they passed tube intersections in a molten blur. And then, at last, he was startled to see a habitat looming over his head and drawing closer; he was ascending headfirst toward a terminus. How in the world had they flipped without his noticing? In other tubes, he could see capsules dropping away from the habitat like beads down a chute. Overhead, Tracy-Ace was disappearing into the building.
As his own capsule decelerated and entered the structure, Legroeder was aware that he had just acquired, in several minutes, considerable knowledge about this Free Kyber world known as Ivan. Not that he could put his finger on any of it this instant, but he knew that it was tucked away somewhere in his cranium. His implants were likely to be working long into the night, sorting it all out.
The capsule came to rest on a platform distinguishable only by color—blue—from the one they had left behind. As he stepped out beside Tracy-Ace, he felt an unexpected pleasure, as if he were glad to see her, an old and comfortable friend. He stopped in his tracks, stunned by the feeling. Why did he suddenly feel as if he had known her for years?
"What?" Tracy-Ace said.
He let out his breath, banishing the thought. "Nice ride," he muttered.
She peered at him with obvious curiosity. "We go this way," she said, pointing to the left.
As they moved on, he began to suspect that she was puzzling over him as much as he was over her. (Did you pass personal information between us during that download link?) Legroeder muttered to his implants.
// If you mean information about your past, and your true identity, no.//
(Good.)
// But there was a certain amount of handshaking involved, and personal protocol exchange. Most of it was strictly augment-exchange protocol.//
(Do I hear a "but"—?)
// But there had to be certain personal-preference exchanges to establish how and what would be transferred. To establish "trust," as it were. That could be part of what you sense.//
He wondered uneasily just how much "personal preference" information had been exchanged. How could protocol exchanges make him feel not just warmth, but a certain actual attraction toward this pirate whom he hardly knew? These augments were beginning to scare him.
// We're only here to serve.//
(Mm.)
"...be staying here in this sector," Tracy-Ace was saying. "This is where we put visitors and people who are... between jobs. You know, like unemployed heroes." She flashed a grin at him—and he flushed,
realizing that he felt such a palpable attraction that he had to shove his hands firmly in his pockets to keep from reaching out and touching her. He countered the thought by thinking about his imprisoned comrades, and wondering when he might dare to ask about them.
Tracy-Ace had quickened her long-legged stride. They walked, rode lift-tubes, walked some more. When they finally stopped at a closed door, they might have been in the hallway of a cheap apartment building anywhere in the known galaxy. Tracy-Ace pressed her hand to the plate beside the door. "Number 7494," she said. "Remember that." The door paled and she ushered him into a room the size of a crew cabin on a starship. "Your new home."
Legroeder surveyed the place. It was plain but neat: narrow bunk, tiny desk with com, table, sling chair. Perfect for a monk. Heaven, compared to what he'd lived in for seven years at DeNoble. His bag, which he had last seen in his cabin on Flechette, was sitting on the bunk. They were efficient here. He could forget about any hopes he might have had about sneaking back one day to transmit a message from Flechette.
// That was hardly a serious option, you know.//
(Well, yes, but... )
// The underground. Finding the underground is your only real option now.//
(I am aware of that, thank you.)
"You ought to be comfortable here," Tracy-Ace was saying.
"Thank you." He struggled to find words, and hoped she wasn't reading his thoughts. "I guess—it'll take time to learn my way around. And to figure out—I don't know—what I'll be useful for." It was starting to hit him all over again how alone he was here. With the unraveling of the Narseil plan to get in, get info, and get out, it was really all up to him. Suppose he couldn't contact the underground. What then? Sign on to another ship, and try to broadcast a message in flight, before they killed him? H'zzarrelik would wait out there for fifteen days before heading back with their prisoners. Once they were gone, there would be nobody to broadcast to.
"You'll learn fast," Tracy-Ace said, touching his arm. "I'm going to set you up with some study programs, to get you oriented."
He'd felt an electric tingle at her touch, and was trying to pretend he hadn't.
Eternity's End Page 32
